History Lesson: Magazine covers through the years

Heard a lot about “joining the conversation”? Harry Rowe, Class of 1912, was ahead of that game when he launched the magazine of Bates 91 years ago.

In the magazine’s first issue, managing editor Rowe presented the college magazine “with some trepidation.”

He felt that way because, as he wrote, “there is no way of knowing what alumni want” in a magazine until readers see and react to the first one.

So in that first issue, Rowe extended an unpretentious invitation to join the discussion of all things Bates. With “suggestion and constructive criticism” in the Bates fashion, Rowe knew that the magazine would evolve over time (though he may not have anticipated a yellow cover).

As shown by 91 years of covers, the mag’s look and feel has certainly changed. Yet the reader’s main interest — what’s going on at Bates — hasn’t. Which is why, in that first issue, you learned about a guest lecturer who vigorously denounced the Bolshevik Revolution, about a new freshman initiation program in lieu of a ban on “indiscriminate hazing,” and why the football team had a tough go of it in 1919.

Skull Session

This sketch of a cat skull by Cecelia Christensen, Class of 1919, is displayed in the lobby of Carnegie Science Hall.

Past and present, “students grapple with the spatial component of knowledge,” says Don Dearborn, chair of the biology department. “Transforming something you see, or know to exist, into another form, whether a drawing or a computer image, is a powerful tool for learning.”

Riders Up

Photo courtesy of the Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library.

In the 1930s, riding was among the many offerings of the Women’s Athletic Association. The Bates women’s athletics motto — “a sport for every girl and every girl in a sport” — reflected the national reaction to the era’s professionalized and exclusive sports culture.

Pete’s Prize

Meredith “Pete” Burrill ’25 won the Garcelon Cup for hurdles in 1922. Then Burrill took another leap forward, becoming a world authority on geographic place names.